weapon, with a flintlock which was broken, and in the barrel a piece of greasy red rag. The wretched lad held a paper in one hand, which was found to be some sort of petition on behalf of the Fenian prisoners. When he came up for trial a plea of insanity was put in on his behalf, but he did not seem to be insane in the sense of being irresponsible for his actions or incapable of understanding the penalty they involved, and he was sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment and a whipping. We have hurried over many years for the purpose of completing this painful and ludicrous catalogue of the attempts made against the Queen. It will be seen that in not a single instance was there the slightest political significance to be attached to them. Even in our own softened and civilized time it sometimes happens that an attempt is made on the life of a sovereign which, however we may condemn and reprobate it on moral grounds, yet does seem to bear a distinct political meaning, and to show that there are fanatical minds still burning under some sense of national or personal wrong. But in the various attacks which were made on Queen Victoria nothing of the kind was even pretended. There was no opportunity for any vaporing about Brutus and Charlotte Corday. The impulse, where it was not that of sheer insanity, was of kin to the vulgar love of notoriety in certain minds which sets on those whom it pervades to mutilate noble works of art and scrawl their autographs on the marble of immortal monuments. There was a great deal of wisdom shown in not dealing too severely with most of these offences, and in not treating them too much au sérieux. Prince Albert himself said that "the vindictive feeling of the common people would be a thousand times more dangerous than the madness of individuals." There was not, indeed, the slightest danger at any time that the "common people" of England could be wrought up to any sympathy with assassination; nor was this what Prince Albert meant. But the Queen and her husband were yet new to power, and the people had not quite lost all memory of sovereigns who, well-meaning enough, had yet scarcely understood constitutional government, and there were wild rumors of reaction this way and revolution that way. It might have fomented a feeling of distrust and dissatisfaction if the people had seen any dispo

sition on the part of those in authority to strain the criminal law for the sake of enforcing a death penalty against creatures like Oxford and Bean. The most alarming and unnerv ing of all dangers to a ruler is that of assassination. Even the best and most blameless sovereign is not wholly secure against it. The hand of Oxford might have killed the Queen. Perhaps, however, the best protection a sovereign can have is not to exaggerate the danger. There is no safety in mere severity of punishment. Where the attempt is serious and desperate, it is that of a fanaticism which holds its life in its hand, and is not to be deterred by fear of death. The tortures of Ravaillac did not deter Damiens. The birch in the case of Bean and O'Connor may effectively discountenance enterprises which are born of the mountebank's and not the fanatic's spirit.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE OPIUM WAR.

THE Opium dispute with China was going on when the Queen came to the throne. The Opium War broke out soon after. On March 3d, 1843, five huge wagons, each of them drawn by four horses, and the whole under escort of a detachment of the 60th Regiment, arrived in front of the Mint. An immense crowd followed the wagons. It was seen that they were filled with boxes; and one of the boxes having been somewhat broken in its journey, the crowd were able to see that it was crammed full of odd-looking silver coins. The lookers-on were delighted, as well as amused, by the sight of this huge consignment of treasure; and when it became known that the silver money was the first instalment of the China ransom, there were lusty cheers given as the wagons passed through the gates of the Mint. This was a payment on account of the war indemnity imposed on China. Nearly four millions and a half sterling was the sum of the indemnity, in addition to one million and a quarter which had already been paid by the Chinese authorities. Many readers may remember that for some time "China money was regularly set down as an item in the revenues of each

year with which the Chancellor of the Exchequer had to deal. The China War, of which this money was the spoil, was not, perhaps, an event of which the nation was entitled to be very proud. It was the precursor of other wars; the policy on which it was conducted has never since ceased altogether to be a question of more or less excited controversy; but it may safely be asserted that if the same events were to occur in our day it would be hardly possible to find a ministry to originate a war, for which at the same time it must be owned that the vast majority of the people, of all politics and classes, were only too ready then to find excuse and even justification. The wagon-loads of silver conveyed into the Mint amidst the cheers of the crowd were the spoils of the famous Opium War.

Reduced to plain words, the principle for which we fought in the China War was the right of Great Britain to force a peculiar trade upon a foreign people in spite of the protestations of the Government and all such public opinion as there was of the nation. Of course this was not the avowed motive of the war. Not often in history is the real and inspiring motive of a war proclaimed in so many words by those who carry it on. Not often, indeed, is it seen, naked and avowed, even in the minds of its promoters themselves. As the quarrel between this country and China went on, a great many minor and incidental subjects of dispute arose, which for the moment put the one main and original question out of people's minds; and in the course of these discussions it happened more than once that the Chinese authorities took some steps which put them decidedly in the wrong. Thus it is true enough that there were particular passages of the controversy when the English Government had all or nearly all of the right on their side, so far as the immediate incident of the dispute was concerned; and when, if that had been the whole matter of quarrel, or if the quarrel had begun there, a patriotic minister might have been justified in thinking that the Chinese were determined to offend England and deserved humiliation. But no consideration of this kind can now hide from our eyes the fact that in the beginning and the very origin of the quarrel we were distinctly in the wrong. We asserted or at least acted on the assertion of a claim so unreasonable and even monstrous, that it never

could have been made upon any nation strong enough to render its assertion a matter of serious responsibility. The most important lessons a nation can learn from its own history are found in the exposure of its own errors. Historians have sometimes done more evil than court flatterers when they have gone about to glorify the errors of their own people, and to make wrong appear right, because an English Government talked the public opinion of the time into a confusion of principles.

The whole principle of Chinese civilization, at the time when the Opium War broke out, was based on conditions which to any modern nation must seem erroneous and unreasonable. The Chinese governments and people desired to have no political relations or dealings whatever with any other State. They were not so obstinately set against private and commercial dealings; but they would have no political intercourse with foreigners, and they would not even recognize the existence of foreign peoples as States. They were perfectly satisfied with themselves and their own systems. They were convinced that their own systems were not only wise but absolutely perfect. It is superfluous to say that this was in itself evidence of ignorance and self-conceit. A belief in the perfection of their own systems could only exist among a people who knew nothing of any other systems. But absurd as the idea must appear to us, yet the Chinese might have found a good deal to say for it. It was the result of a civilization so ancient that the oldest events preserved in European history were but as yesterday in the comparison. Whatever its errors and defects, it was distinctly a civilization. It was a system with a literature and laws and institutions of its own; it was a coherent and harmonious social and political system which had, on the whole, worked tolerably well. It was not very unlike, in its principles, the kind of civilization which at one time it was the whim of men of genius, like Rousseau and Diderot, to idealize and admire. The European, of whatever nation, may be said to like change, and to believe in its necessity. His instincts and his convictions alike tend this way. The sleepiest of Europeans-the Neapolitan, who lies with his feet in the water on the Chiaja; the Spaniard, who smokes his cigar and sips his coffee as if life had no active business whatever;

the flâneur of the Paris boulevards; the beggar who lounged from cabin to cabin in Ireland a generation ago-all these, no matter how little inclined for change themselves, would be delighted to hear of travel and enterprise, and of new things and new discoveries. But to the Chinese, of all Eastern races, the very idea of travel and change was something repulsive and odious. As the thought of having to go a day unwashed would be to the educated Englishman of our age, or as the edge of a precipice is to a nervous man, so was the idea of innovation to the Chinese of that time. The ordinary Oriental dreads and detests change; but the Chinese at that time went as far beyond the ordinary Oriental as the latter goes beyond an average Englishman. In the present day a considerable alteration has taken place in this respect. The Chinese have had innovation after innovation forced on them, until at last they have taken up with the new order of things, like people who feel that it is idle to resist their fate any longer. The emigration from China has been as remarkable as that from Ireland or Germany; and the United States finds itself confronted with a question of the first magnitude when it asks itself what is to be the influence and operation of the descent of the Chinese populations along the Pacific slope. Japan has put on modern and European civilization like a garment. Japan effected in a few years a revolution in the political constitution and the social habits of her people, and in their very way of looking at things, the like of which no other State ever accomplished in a century. But nothing of all this was thought of at the time of the China War. The one thing which China asked of European civilization and the thing called Modern. Progress was to be let alone. China's prayer to Europe was that of Diogenes to Alexander-"Stand out of my sunshine."

It was, as we have said, to political relationships rather than to private and commercial dealings with foreign peoples that the Chinese felt an unconquerable objection. They did not, indeed, like even private and commercial dealings with foreigners. They would much rather have lived without ever seeing the face of a foreigner. But they had put up with the private intrusion of foreigners and trade, and had had dealings with American traders, and with the East India Company. The charter and the exclusive rights of